Miriam Schulman
If you happen to be reading this article online from your computer at work, your boss may be reading over your shoulder-electronically. New technologies allow employers to check whether employees are wasting time at recreational Web sites or sending unprofessional e-mails. But when do an employer's legitimate business interests become an unacceptable invasion of worker privacy?
Last year, a software package came on the market that allows employers to monitor their workers' Internet use. It employs a database of 45,000 Web sites that are categorized as "productive," "unproductive," or "neutral," and rates employees based on their browsing. It identifies the most frequent users and the most popular sites. It's called LittleBrother.
Though the title is tongue-in-cheek, LittleBrother does represent the tremendous capabilities technology has provided for employers to keep track of what their work force is up to. There are also programs to search e-mails and programs to block objectionable Web sites. Beyond installing monitoring software, your boss can simply go into your hard drive, check your cache to see where you've been on the Net, and read your e-mail.
Did you delete that message you sent about his incompetence? Not good enough. The e-mail trash bin probably still exists on the server, and there are plenty of computer consultants who can retrieve the incriminating message.
All told, such monitoring is a widespread-and-growing-phenomenon. Looking just at e-mail, a 1996 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 36 percent of responding companies searched employee messages regularly and 70 percent said employers should reserve the right to do so.
The Law
Legally, employees have little recourse. The most relevant federal law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, prohibits unauthorized interception of various electronic communications, including e-mail. However, the law exempts service providers from its provisions, which is commonly interpreted to include employers who provide e-mail and Net access, according to David Sobel, legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. A federal bill that would have required employers at least to notify workers that they were being monitored failed to come to a vote from 1993 to 1995.
The situation in the courts is similar. "There aren't many cases, and they tend to go against the employee," according to Santa Clara University Professor of Law Dorothy Glancy. "Often, court opinions take the point of view that when the employees are using employers' property—the employers' computers and networks—the employees' expectation of privacy is minimal." When courts take this view, Glancy continues, "if employees want to have private communications, they can enjoy them on their own time and equipment."
In a presentation on employee monitoring, Mark S. Dichter and Michael S. Burkhardt of the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius explain that cour ...
On a blog site, httpcuriosity.discovery.comquestionsuperhuman.docx
Miriam SchulmanIf you happen to be reading this article online fro
1. Miriam Schulman
If you happen to be reading this article online from your
computer at work, your boss may be reading over your
shoulder-electronically. New technologies allow employers to
check whether employees are wasting time at recreational Web
sites or sending unprofessional e-mails. But when do an
employer's legitimate business interests become an unacceptable
invasion of worker privacy?
Last year, a software package came on the market that allows
employers to monitor their workers' Internet use. It employs a
database of 45,000 Web sites that are categorized as
"productive," "unproductive," or "neutral," and rates employees
based on their browsing. It identifies the most frequent users
and the most popular sites. It's called LittleBrother.
Though the title is tongue-in-cheek, LittleBrother does
represent the tremendous capabilities technology has provided
for employers to keep track of what their work force is up to.
There are also programs to search e-mails and programs to
block objectionable Web sites. Beyond installing monitoring
software, your boss can simply go into your hard drive, check
your cache to see where you've been on the Net, and read your
e-mail.
Did you delete that message you sent about his incompetence?
Not good enough. The e-mail trash bin probably still exists on
the server, and there are plenty of computer consultants who can
retrieve the incriminating message.
All told, such monitoring is a widespread-and-growing-
phenomenon. Looking just at e-mail, a 1996 survey by the
Society for Human Resource Management found that 36 percent
of responding companies searched employee messages regularly
and 70 percent said employers should reserve the right to do so.
The Law
Legally, employees have little recourse. The most relevant
federal law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act,
2. prohibits unauthorized interception of various electronic
communications, including e-mail. However, the law exempts
service providers from its provisions, which is commonly
interpreted to include employers who provide e-mail and Net
access, according to David Sobel, legal counsel for the
Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. A
federal bill that would have required employers at least to
notify workers that they were being monitored failed to come to
a vote from 1993 to 1995.
The situation in the courts is similar. "There aren't many cases,
and they tend to go against the employee," according to Santa
Clara University Professor of Law Dorothy Glancy. "Often,
court opinions take the point of view that when the employees
are using employers' property—the employers' computers and
networks—the employees' expectation of privacy is minimal."
When courts take this view, Glancy continues, "if employees
want to have private communications, they can enjoy them on
their own time and equipment."
In a presentation on employee monitoring, Mark S. Dichter and
Michael S. Burkhardt of the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
explain that courts have tried to balance "an employee's
reasonable expectation of privacy against the employer's
business justification for monitoring."
For example, in Smyth v. Pillsbury Co., Michael Smyth argued
that his privacy was violated and he was wrongfully discharged
from his job after his employers read several e-mails he had
exchanged with his supervisor. In the electronic messages,
among other offensive references, he threatened to "kill the
backstabbing bastards" in sales management.
The court ruled that Smyth had "no reasonable expectation of
privacy" on his employer's system, despite the fact that
Pillsbury had repeatedly assured employees that their e-mail
was confidential. In addition, the court held that the company's
interest in preventing "inappropriate and unprofessional"
conduct outweighed Smyth's privacy rights.
3. Privacy as a Moral Matter
But the fact that employee monitoring is legal does not
automatically make it right. From an ethical point of view, an
employee surely does not give up all of his or her privacy when
entering the workplace. To determine how far employee and
employer moral rights should extend, it's useful to start with a
brief exploration of how privacy becomes a moral matter.
Michael J. Meyer, SCU professor of philosophy, explains it this
way: "Employees are autonomous moral agents. Among other
things, that means they have independent moral status defined
by some set of rights, not the least of which is the right not to
be used by others only as a means to increase overall welfare or
profits."
Applying this to the workplace, Meyer says, "As thinking
actors, human beings are more than cogs in an organization—
things to be pushed around so as to maximize profits. They are
entitled to respect, which requires some attention to privacy. If
a boss were to monitor every conversation or move, most of us
would think of such an environment as more like a prison than a
humane workplace." But, like all rights, privacy is not absolute.
Sometimes, as in the case of law enforcement, invasions of
privacy may be warranted. In "Privacy, Morality, and the Law,"
William Parent, also a philosophy professor at SCU, sets out six
criteria for determining whether an invasion of privacy is
justifiable:
1. For what purpose is the undocumented personal knowledge
sought?
2. Is this purpose a legitimate and important one?
3. Is the knowledge sought through invasion of privacy relevant
to its justifying purpose?
4. Is invasion of privacy the only or the least offensive means
of obtaining the knowledge?
5. What restrictions or procedural restraints have been placed
on the privacy-invading techniques?
6. How will the personal knowledge be protected once it has
been acquired?
4. These questions can offer guidance as we consider both sides of
the controversy.
The Case for Workplace Monitoring
If an employer uses a software package that sweeps through
office computers and eliminates games workers have installed,
few people will feel such an action is an invasion of privacy.
Our comfort with this kind of intrusion suggests that most of us
don't fault an employer who insists that the equipment he or she
provides be used for work, at least during working hours.
Why, then, should we balk when an employer tries to ensure
that his equipment is not being used to surf non-job-related Web
sites? Hours spent online browsing the recipe files of
Epicurious are no less a breach of the work contract than games
playing.
"The underlying principle is value for money," says Joseph R.
Garber, a columnist for Forbes magazine. "If you don't deliver
value for money, in some sense, you're lying."
Garber gives this illustration: If we hired someone to paint our
house, and they didn't do the northern wall, we would feel moral
outrage. Similarly, if we pay workers to give a good day's work
and they are, instead, surfing X-rated Web sites, we are also
morally outraged.
Such "cyberlollygagging" is no small problem. A study by
Nielsen Media Research found that employees at major
corporations such as IBM, Apple, and AT&T logged onto the
online edition of Penthouse thousands of times a month.
Beyond worry about lost productivity, employers have
legitimate concerns about the use of e-mail in thefts of
proprietary information, which, according to the "Handbook on
White Collar Crime," account for more than $2 billion in losses
a year. The transfer of such information can be monitored by
programs that search employee e-mails for suspect word strings
or by employers simply going into the employee's hard drive
and reading the messages.
In a case last year, a former employee of Cadence Systems was
5. charged with stealing proprietary information and intending to
bring it to the rival software maker Avant! According to
prosecutors, before leaving Cadence, he e-mailed a file
containing 5 million bytes to a personal e-mail account. Such
large messages suggested that he might be sending source code
for the company's products and prompted Cadence to contact the
police.
Electronic communications can pose other dangers for
employers besides breached security and lost productivity. More
and more, employers are being held legally liable for the
atmosphere in the workplace. Although the case was ultimately
dismissed, employers worry about litigation like the $70-million
suit brought by Morgan Stanley employees, who claimed that
racist jokes on the company's electronic mail system created a
hostile work environment.
Sexual harassment cases also often hinge on allegations of a
hostile work environment, which might be evidenced by
employees downloading or displaying pornographic material
from the Web or sending off-color e-mails. "The days of guys
putting naked bunnies up on their computer screens are gone
because that's actionable stuff," Garber comments.
To prevent such abuses, Garber argues, employers need to be
allowed to monitor: "We can't make corporations responsible
for stopping unacceptable forms of behavior and then deny them
the tools needed to keep an eye out for that behavior."
The Case Against Workplace Monitoring
Consider this scenario: It's lunch hour. An employee writes a
note to her boyfriend. She puts it in an envelope, affixes her
own stamp, and drops it in the basket where outgoing mail is
collected. Does the fact that the pencil and paper she used
belong to her employer give her boss the right to open and read
this letter?
Although most people would answer no, that's just the argument
employers are making to defend monitoring e-mail, according to
the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Sobel: Employers
6. claim that because they own the computer, they have the right
to read the e-mail it produces. The situation is complicated by
the fact that work and personal life are not as clearly delineated
as they once were, due, in part, to the very technologies that are
being monitored. Employees may telecommute, doing much of
their business through e-mail and the Net. Often, they work a
good deal more than 40 hours a week. If they take a moment to
send a message to Aunt Margaret in Saskatoon, do they not have
a right to expect their e-mail will be confidential?
"Most people don't work 8 to 5," says Anthony Pozos, senior
vice president for human resources and corporate services at
Amdahl Corp. "We pay people to do a job; we don't really pay
by time increment. Employees probably do use our e-mail or
Web access for personal matters; it's analogous to using the
telephone. People do sometimes need to do personal things on
the job, but as long as it doesn't interfere with work, that should
be okay."
Another ethical consideration in the debate is fairness. Usually,
it's not corporate higher-ups who are subject to monitoring, but
line workers. That's particularly true when it comes to key-
stroke monitoring, a form of electronic surveillance that
measures the speed of data entry. According to an article in
Public Personnel Management, "The majority of employees
being electronically monitored are women in low-paying
clerical positions."
Then there's Parent's question about whether the invasion of
privacy (represented by monitoring) is the only or the least
offensive means of obtaining the information employers seek. In
a survey conducted by PC World, slightly more than half of the
executives interviewed were opposed to monitoring employees'
Internet use. Scott Paddock, manager of PC Brokers, told the
magazine, "First, I trust my employees; that's why they work for
me. If there were to be any problems with an employee, those
problems would present themselves without the need for me to
get involved in cloak-and-dagger shenanigans. And second, if I
spent time monitoring their Web usage, I would be just as guilty
7. of wasting time as my behavior implies they are."
Trust is often mentioned by opponents of monitoring as a major
ethical issue. As Rita C. Manning writes in the Journal of
Business Ethics, "When we look at the workplaces in which
surveillance is common, we see communities in trouble. What is
missing in these communiti es is trust."
If, Manning continues, employers create trust, employee
behavior "will conform to certain norms, not as a result of being
watched, but as a result of the care and respect which are part of
the communal fabric."
Some Possibilities for Common Ground
It is possible to moot many of these ethical issues by arguing
that monitoring all comes down to a question of contract. That
is the view of David Friedman, an economist and professor at
SCU's School of Law.
"There isn't an agreement that is morally right for everybody.
The important thing is what the parties agree to," he says. "If
the employer gives a promise of privacy, then that should be
respected." If, on the other hand, the employer reserves the
right to read e-mail or monitor Web browsing, the worker can
either accept those terms or look elsewhere for employment,
Friedman continues.
Friedman's argument doesn't address the problems of lower -
income workers who may not have a choice about whether to
accept a job or, if they do, may be choosing between entry-level
positions where monitoring is a feature of the work
environment.
But he does point to an area where some common ground may
exist between opponents and proponents of monitoring. Most
parties to the debate agree that companies should have clear
policies on electronic surveillance and that these should be
effectively communicated to employees.
A recent study by International Data Corp. suggests that such
clarity does not currently prevail. A survey of employees at 110
businesses showed that 45 percent thought their company had
8. no policy on e-mail at all. Most of those who did know the
company policy had either learned it by word of mouth or were
directly involved in writing it.
Spelling out company policy "is our bottom line," says Sobel.
"We would like to see an outright prohibition on e-mail
monitoring in the workplace, but, at the very least, there needs
to be notice to employees if that's the policy."
Pozos believes that involving employees in the creation of a
monitoring policy is also a way to find common ground. By
bringing employees and managers together to develop principles
and guidelines for electronic mail, Amdahl was able to create a
policy that was acceptable to both sides, Pozos says.
In any case, employers who reserve the right to monitor should
attend to the considerations Parent proposes, ensuring at least
that the monitoring serves a legitimate purpose and follows
clear procedures to protect a worker's personal life from
unnecessary prying, either by LittleBrother or by Big Brother.
Further Reading
Dichter, Mark S., and Burkhardt, Michael S. "Electronic
Interaction in the Workplace: Monitoring, Retrieving and
Storing Employee Communications in the Internet Age."
Garber, Joseph. "The Right to Goof Off." Forbes (Oct. 20,
1997) p. 297.
Greenlaw, Paul S., and Prudeanu, Cornelia. "The Impact of
Federal Legislation to Limit Electronic Monitoring." Public
Personnel Management 26, 2 (June 22, 1997) p. 227.
Manning, Rita C. "Liberal and Communitarian Defenses of
Workplace Privacy." Journal of Business Ethics 6, 8 (June
1997) p. 817.
Parent, W.A. "Privacy, Morality, and the Law." Philosophy &
Public Affairs 12, 4 (Fall 1983) p. 269.
GCU College of Education
9. LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE
Section 1: Lesson Preparation
Teacher Candidate Name:
Grade Level:
Date:
Unit/Subject:
Instructional Plan Title:
Lesson Summary and Focus:
In 2-3 sentences, summarize the lesson, identifying the central
focus based on the content and skills you are teaching.
Classroom and Student Factors/Grouping:
Describe the important classroom factors (demographics and
environment) and student factors (IEPs, 504s, ELLs, students
with behavior concerns, gifted learners), and the effect of those
factors on planning, teaching, and assessing students to
facilitate learning for all students. This should be limited to 2-3
sentences and the information should inform the differentiation
components of the lesson.
10. National/State Learning Standards:
Review national and state standards to become familiar with the
standards you will be working with in the classroom
environment.
Your goal in this section is to identify the standards that are the
focus of the lesson being presented. Standards must address
learning initiatives from one or more content areas, as well as
align with the lesson’s learning targets/objectives and
assessments.
Include the standards with the performance indicators and the
standard language in its entirety.
Specific Learning Target(s)/Objectives:
Learning objectives are designed to identify what the teacher
intends to measure in learning. These must be aligned with the
standards. When creating objectives, a learner must consider the
following:
· Who is the audience
· What action verb will be measured during
instruction/assessment
· What tools or conditions are being used to meet the learning
What is being assessed in the lesson must align directly to the
objective created. This should not be a summary of the lesson,
but a measurable statement demonstrating what the student will
be assessed on at the completion of the lesson. For instance,
“understand” is not measureable, but “describe” and “identify”
are.
For example:
Given an unlabeled map outlining the 50 states, students will
accurately label all state names.
11. Academic Language
In this section, include a bulleted list of the general academic
vocabulary and content-specific vocabulary you need to teach.
In a few sentences, describe how you will teach students those
terms in the lesson.
Resources, Materials, Equipment, and Technology:
List all resources, materials, equipment, and technology you and
the students will use during the lesson. As required by your
instructor, add or attach copies of ALL printed and online
materials at the end of this template. Include links needed for
online resources.
Section 2: Instructional Planning
Anticipatory Set
Your goal in this section is to open the lesson by activating
students’ prior knowledge, linking previous learning with what
they will be learning in this lesson and gaining student interest
12. for the lesson. Consider various learning preferences
(movement, music, visuals) as a tool to engage interest and
motivate learners for the lesson.
In a bulleted list, describe the materials and activities you will
use to open the lesson. Bold any materials you will need to
prepare for the lesson.
For example:
· I will use a visual of the planet Earth and ask students to
describe what Earth looks like.
· I will record their ideas on the white board and ask more
questions about the amount of water they think is on planet
Earth and where the water is located.
Time Needed
Multiple Means of Representation
Learners perceive and comprehend information differently.
Your goal in this section is to explain how you would present
content in various ways to meet the needs of different learners.
For example, you may present the material using guided notes,
graphic organizers, video or other visual media, annotation
tools, anchor charts, hands-on manipulatives, adaptive
technologies, etc.
In a bulleted list, describe the materials you will use to
differentiate instruction and how you will use these materials
throughout the lesson to support learning. Bold any materials
you will need to prepare for the lesson.
For example:
· I will use a Venn diagram graphic organizer to teach students
how to compare and contrast the two main characters in the
read-aloud story.
· I will model one example on the white board before allowing
students to work on the Venn diagram graphic organizer with
their elbow partner.
13. Explain how you will differentiate materials for each of the
following groups:
· English language learners (ELL):
· Students with special needs:
· Students with gifted abilities:
· Early finishers (those students who finish early and may need
additional resources/support):
Time Needed
Multiple Means of Engagement
Your goal for this section is to outline how you will engage
students in interacting with the content and academic language.
How will students explore, practice, and apply the content? For
14. example, you may engage students through collaborative group
work, Kagan cooperative learning structures, hands-on
activities, structured discussions, reading and writing activities,
experiments, problem solving, etc.
In a bulleted list, describe the activities you will engage
students in to allow them to explore, practice, and apply the
content and academic language. Bold any activities you will use
in the lesson. Also, include formative questioning strategies and
higher order thinking questions you might pose.
For example:
· I will use a matching card activity where students will need to
find a partner with a card that has an answer that matches their
number sentence.
· I will model one example of solving a number sentence on the
white board before having students search for the matching
card.
· I will then have the partner who has the number sentence
explain to their partner how they got the answer.
Explain how you will differentiate activities for each of the
following groups:
· English language learners (ELL):
· Students with special needs:
15. · Students with gifted abilities:
· Early finishers (those students who finish early and may need
additional resources/support):
Time Needed
Multiple Means of Expression
Learners differ in the ways they navigate a learning
environment and express what they know. Your goal in this
section is to explain the various ways in which your students
will demonstrate what they have learned. Explain how you will
provide alternative means for response, selection, and
composition to accommodate all learners. Will you tier any of
these products? Will you offer students choices to demonstrate
mastery? This section is essentially differentiated assessment.
In a bulleted list, explain the options you will provide for your
students to express their knowledge about the topic. For
example, students may demonstrate their knowledge in more
summative ways through a short answer or multiple-choice test,
multimedia presentation, video, speech to text, website, w ritten
sentence, paragraph, essay, poster, portfolio, hands-on project,
experiment, reflection, blog post, or skit. Bold the names of any
summative assessments.
Students may also demonstrate their knowledge in ways that are
more formative. For example, students may take part in thumbs
up-thumbs middle-thumbs down, a short essay or drawing, an
entrance slip or exit ticket, mini-whiteboard answers, fist to
five, electronic quiz games, running records, four corners, or
hand raising.Underline the names of any formative assessments.
For example:
16. Students will complete a one-paragraph reflection on the in-
class simulation they experienced. They will be expected to
write the reflection using complete sentences, proper
capitalization and punctuation, and utilize an example from the
simulation to demonstrate their understanding. Students will
also take part in formative assessments throughout the lesson,
such as thumbs up-thumbs middle-thumbs down and pair-share
discussions, where you will determine if you need to re-teach or
re-direct learning.
Explain how you will differentiate assessments for each of the
following groups:
· English language learners (ELL):
· Students with special needs:
· Students with gifted abilities:
· Early finishers (those students who finish early and may need
additional resources/support):
18. 504
Other
Age
Reading Performance Level/Score*
Math Performance Level/Score*
Arturo
Yes - 4
Low
Mexican
Spanish
Male
No
Glasses
Grade level
One year below grade level/98
At grade level/151
Bertie
Yes - 5
Low
Vietnamese
Vietnamese
Female
19. No
None
Grade level
One year above grade level/210
At grade level/108
Beryl
No
Mid
White
English
Female
No
None
Grade level
Two years above grade level/268
At grade level/163
20. Brandie
Yes - 4
Low
Liberian
Liberian English
Female
No
None
Grade level
At grade level/178
One year below grade level/79
Dessie
Yes - 4
Mid
Russian
Russian
Female
No
None
Grade level
21. At grade level/113
One year below grade level/65
Diana
Yes - 4
Low
Mexican
Spanish
Female
No
None
Grade level
One year below grade level/79
At grade level/198
24. Male
ADHD
None
One year above grade level
One year below grade level/45
At grade level/163
Fatma
Yes - 5
Low
Mexican
Spanish
Female
No
Glasses
Grade level
One year below grade level/21
One year above grade level/289
26. Grade level
At grade level/162
At grade level/178
Fredrick
No
Low
White
English
Male
Learning Disabled
None
One year above grade level
Two years below grade level/285
Two years below grade level/15
27. Ines
Yes - 4
Low
Mexican
Spanish
Female
Learning Disabled
Glasses
Grade level
One year below grade level/50
One year below grade level/55
Jade
No
Mid
African American
English
Female
No
None
Grade level
At grade level/183
One year above grade level/224
29. Navajo
Female
No
None
Grade level
At grade level/110
At grade level/141
Maria
No
Mid
Mexican
Spanish
Female
No
NOTE: School does not have gifted program
Grade level
At grade level/139
Two years above grade level/296
31. Grade level
One year above grade level/205
At grade level/180
Noah
No
Low
African American
English
Male
No
Glasses
Grade level
At grade level/193
At grade level/177
36. Yes - 2
Low
Somalian Refugee
Somali
Male
No
None
Grade level
One year below grade level/51
Two years below grade level/45
Yung
Yes - 4
Low
Burmese
Burmese
Male
No
None
One year below grade level
One year below grade level/98
Two years below grade level/65
